


sibilance

by andnowforyaya



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood and Injury, M/M, Past Sexual Assault, Post-War, Trauma, Trust, Violence, adding the tag but it's not explicit, wayv members
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-10-01 16:57:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17247974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: Doctor Qian Kun chases the stories he hears on the rivers to their origins, and he meets a beautiful boy underneath a waterfall.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so this was inspired by [yas' gothic horror au](https://twitter.com/minyasih/status/1078103300258611201) which i saw and immediately fell in love with! thanks for letting me play with your universe <3
> 
> thank you R for your unending support <3 ilu

In the summers, Doctor Qian Kun leaves the bustling city of Hong Kong and makes his rounds through the villages in the countryside, healing the sick and wounded there, tending to families who have no way to travel to the hospitals in the cities and towns, and have no money besides. Summer is when sickness festers like a boil, when the stink of disease mixes with the rot of fruit left too long on golden altars. Other doctors make their rounds in the fall when the weather for travel is a bit fairer, but Kun knows that the heat makes people desperate, and when people are desperate, he is paid handsomely for the small miracles he performs.

It is two weeks into the summer, and his group of trained staff -- nurses and younger doctors and scouts and a couple of soldiers to guard them all -- has been traveling by boat down the river from one village to the next, staying sometimes for three or four nights in each, when he starts to hear whispers of news in one of the villages past where the river breaks into a waterfall, and then the waters swirl out between the mouths of mountains and joins the peninsula. The news is this: a battle hard-won, and a man-eating river spirit, finally tamed and bound. A great many lives were lost, and a great many still wounded.

Kun has heard stories like this before. Men who chase glory and run into the thick jungle forests hoping to return with the head of a great beast on a pike, only to run back to their villages with tales of monsters of mythical origins -- boys with six arms and three bewitching mouths, one to sing charms woven with sleeping spells and one to whisper enchantments to draw men closer and one, finally, to suck the meat from men’s bones; sirens who shift into the shapes of great lions and panthers as they leap from tree to tree; long-necked ghosts who can summon fire into the palms of their incandescent, shimmering hands. The people of the villages raise altars to these monsters and leave them sacrifices and prayers as though they are gods, hoping to gain favor so that they may last through another season.

It’s not that Kun does not believe the stories, but they serve him no purpose in the city, and for him, medicine is his only faith. However, he has learned to follow these stories, for where there are tales of such battles, there are wounded men and women who need tending, and coin to be made.

.

They journey on the river for two more days before reaching the village of the news’ origin. By then, the story has shifted and gained more detail. The river spirit had emerged from the waters and lain with a man, and when the man refused to return to the waters with him for fear of drowning, the spirit had grown tempestuous and spiteful, and killed the offending mortal with a slash of his fangs against his neck. Then the spirit had come back to shore, taking revenge on the village that would slight him in such a humiliating way. He turned anyone who looked at him to stone and dashed their granite bodies to the ground. He ate the ones he did not turn. The village lived in terror until a group of men learned how the spirit could be bested, and now they kept him shackled to stone just behind the waterfall.

When their boat docks at the small harbor, Kun only sees a quiet village of fishermen and their families. He sends his doctors and nurses to make their rounds, and the scouts to find them lodging. Being so close to the sea, this village is bigger than the others along the river, and sometimes a busy port during trading season. There is an inn that can keep them. The soldiers do as they please, returning to the inn at night, though the one named Yukhei stays by Kun’s side out of a sense of duty and perhaps a little friendship.

On the second night, as they are eating their meal in the inn’s tavern, they overhear the conversation happening at the table next to theirs.

“He was not a beast or a spirit,” someone is saying, howling in laughter, “but a boy after all.”

“Be careful how you speak of him,” another at their table says, his eyes round with fear. “You were not there.”

“But I’ve seen him,” another says. “Bound in irons. A pathetic little monster. I should stick my spear in his throat.” They laugh with one mind, and surely there is another meaning to the words he has said. Kun feels the rice and meat he is chewing grow sour in his mouth.

“You don’t know the fury that could unleash.” This is the man Kun listens to. Yukhei has stilled also, perking an ear towards them. “He’s killed so many. He could kill many more.”

“He’s harmless now,” the first man insists. “And pretty, too.” Another round of laughter. 

Kun’s knuckles turn white around his chopsticks. He places them carefully back onto the table and stands, and Yukhei follows immediately as they walk over to the table. “Excuse me,” Kun says, putting a smile on his face and flashing the armband around his bicep that labels him a doctor. “I couldn’t help but overhear. What is the nature of this beast you’ve so bravely captured?”

“Hah!” one of the men around the table guffaws. “A beast! Yes. Snarling and wild. His look will turn you to stone. But we defeated him, and now he is nothing.”

“To stone, you say,” Kun probes, raising an eyebrow in question.

“Yes,” another man says. The frightened, cautious one. He is smaller than the others, and perhaps younger. Smarter, too, Kun thinks. “A river spirit. Or a sorcerer. Either way, he is dangerous.”

“Then why haven’t you killed him?”

“The men mean to keep him as a prize.”

Kun frowns, mind working. “If he’s as you say…” he trails off, tapping his chin with a finger. “I should like to see him. Study him. For medicine, of course.”

A whisper around the table. Yukhei stands by his side, ever steadfast, hand inching towards his belt where he keeps his knives in case the whispers turn into something more. But then one of the men says, “We shall be glad to take you. For a fee.” When he smiles, he is missing two teeth, and the effect leaves him looking feckless and dull.

“Of course,” Kun says. “Shall we leave in the morning?”

.

It is an hour's walk to the waterfall, and Kun is drenched in sweat by the time they can feel the mist in the air. Only two of the men from last night have come with them, guiding the way. The younger one has stayed behind.

Yukhei curses quietly as he smacks the back of his neck in frustration, no doubt crushing an annoying buzzing mosquito there with the palm of his hand. “The things we do to sate your curiosity, Doctor,” he grumbles as he hacks through a particularly thick tangle of vines ahead of them with his machete. Rifle slung across his back, Yukhei strikes an imposing figure, and Kun hangs back a little bit in order to avoid losing an ear from the swing of his blade.

“Doesn't the pursuit of knowledge excite you? I can almost smell discovery in the air.”

“It's you,” Yukhei says, snickering. “You stink.” When Kun only shoots him a serene smile in response, Yukhei continues, “or it's those men.” He nods his chin to the villagers in front of them. The promise of coin has them eagerly tripping over themselves to show Yukhei and Kun to their captive.

They chop their way through another tangle of vines, and then the forest opens up to the waterfall. It roars in front of them, taller even than some of the tallest buildings in Hong Kong.

“This way!” The villagers wave their arms over their heads and call out to Yukhei and Kun, grinning at their own easy fortune. They take a path by the water's edge and then disappear behind the tumbling falls. 

“Be ready,” Kun warns Yukhei. “They could try to ambush us.”

The taller scoffs, stepping slightly in front of Kun, hand already on the hilt of the machete he'd used to chop their way through the forest. “I'm a trained soldier, Doctor. I know how to do my job.”

“Simply trying to help,” Kun says pleasantly, and Yukhei grins at him.

“Stay behind me,” the younger instructs, rolling his shoulders back to emphasize the difference in height between them.

There is no ambush waiting for them behind the falls, only a short path of slippery rocks, and the glistening mouth of the cave behind it. The men's voices echo from inside the cave.

“This way, Doctor,” they hear from within.

Yukhei and Kun pause and look at each other, clothes drenched and plastered to their skin now. “If I die,” Yukhei whispers as best he can with the beat of the waterfall still drumming their ears, “you must make sure my face is as pretty as it is now in the casket.”

“Your vanity never ceases to surprise me,” Kun deadpans. “And anyway, you can't say things like that. Aren't you the soldier here? What have you to fear?”

“I've fought many men,” Yukhei says, “but never a river spirit.” He grins as he speaks, no doubt finding the whole thing ridiculous. Surely there is an explanation for the murders of so many men -- perhaps a crazed killer or something more feral, but a vengeful spirit rising out of the waters?

“Don't get scared now,” Kun teases. “Come, let's go.”

They go deeper into the cave. The dampness is a solid entity in their lungs. Summer has heated the mountain from the inside-out, and the deeper they go into the cave, the more it feels like they're traveling into the depths of a very wet hell. But it's not far before the rock widens into a sort of chamber, and within the chamber, voices echo. Light trickles in from a small, natural hole in the ceiling of the chamber. 

“See here, Doctor,” one of the villagers bellows with a sneer. “Our beast! Don't worry, he's quite contained. The keys to his chains are here.” He pats the jangling mass of keys at his belt proudly. 

Kun expects to see some deformity of a man, a hulking figure, a monster in chains. He is ready for that. What he's not ready for is the slight figure bound with his wrists behind his back in iron shackles and chains, his ankles bound also, the chains held in place by a stake the length of a man's arm driven into the ground. He's curled on the cave floor, shivering and pale, his skin glistening iridescent over his shoulders, and a black cloth blindfold hides his eyes from view. Black blood trickles slowly from a wound in his side -- a quick glance tells Kun it was made from the stab of a crude spear. His breathing is shallow -- too shallow. His pants are thin, and torn in some places, spattered with more blood.

A sharp, sudden rage ignites inside of him. “You animals!” he hisses, rushing forward, hand already reaching into the medicine bag he keeps at his hip. “He's hurt badly. Yukhei, I need you to--”

One of the men steps directly in front of the boy on the cave floor, spitting on the ground beside him. “You're not touching him, Doctor. You want to help him? He killed nine of our finest. He deserves to rot.” Kun watches in horror as the man turns and kicks his foot out into the boy's ribs. It makes a dull, thumping sound but the boy doesn't call out, probably already in too much shock for his body to respond. But he does cough a moment later, and blood as dark as night splatters across the floor out of his mouth. What would make blood so black inside the body? Infection?

“Stop!” Kun calls, as the man kicks him again. A chill passes through the cave, making the hairs stand up on the back of Kun's neck, but still he pushes forward, Yukhei close at his heels. Another kick, and another outpouring of blood. Kun starts to run, ears ringing.

“Do you hear that?” The other villager has joined in on the prisoner's torment. “He's chanting. Shut your mouth, or we'll cut out your tongue next!” He squats next to the boy, still keeping his distance, and reaches into his belt to pull out a short knife.

Kun hears it now, the chanting, strangely beautiful in the darkness of the cave. The whispers are sibilant and soothing and altogether inviting, and kind of make Kun feel like he is trying to see through a fog.

He barrels into one of the villagers and Yukhei into the other, knocking them both to the ground. The knife clatters out of the man's hand. He hears Yukhei grunting as he wrestles the other man to keep him down. Kun whirls around to the boy. His lips are moving still, perhaps whispering a prayer? Kun doesn't know, all he knows is that he is compelled to crawl closer, to call out to Yukhei for the keys. His soldier tosses them over without question, and Kun works through each one of the shackles on the boy's wrists until one of them clicks.

The shackles drop from his wrists, revealing purple bruises and raw skin. The shackles on his ankles fall away next.

“Fool!” The villager who had the knife is clambering to his feet, and he trips over himself as he runs towards the mouth of the cave, scared witless. Kun doesn't understand until he turns back to the boy and finds him rising steadily to a seat, legs curled under him, blood trickling out of his mouth and dropping from his chin. The boy reaches up and takes hold of the blindfold, pulling it down, revealing closed eyes and long lashes, an elegantly sloped nose. His cheeks catch the light the same way his shoulders do, and Kun itches to be closer, so that he can see, and touch, and measure.

The ringing and hissing in Kun’s ears grows louder until it is a sharp, piercing sound, but even so he can hear the soft words the boy speaks next. “Take care to lower your eyes, Doctor.”

Kun does so without questioning, tucking his chin to his chest, staying on his knees as the boy rises unsteadily to his feet, using the wall of the cave as support.

“Who is the monster here?” the boy says, and the remaining villager screams like an animal caught in a trap. And then there is nothing, his scream cut off with a choked gurgle. Kun hears Yukhei grunting, struggling, and keeps his eyes lowered as he scans the cave floor until he can see his soldier’s body entangled in a mass of stone. Stone in the shape of a man. Kun’s heart stops in his chest. So it’s true. This boy is a sorcerer, or maybe even something more.

“Please!” he says, startling even himself with the word. “Don’t kill Yukhei. He’s done nothing to you.”

He feels the boy’s weighty gaze fall upon his own shoulders, and trembles under it. The boy’s knees appear next in his field of vision, then his hand as he reaches a finger under Kun’s chin, tilting it up slightly. Kun squeezes his eyes shut, breathing hard through his nose. 

“I am deciding if I should turn you to stone,” the boy says softly, quietly, his voice like the whispering of the wind over tall grass, “or kill you and eat you.”

Kun gasps as his chin is released. He quickly ducks his face again and opens his eyes. The boy has not moved in front of him, and now Kun can see how labored his breathing is, how the wound in his side still oozes blood. “I am a doctor,” Kun says placatingly. “I can tend to you. Your wound. I can help you. You’re hurt.”

“By men like you,” the boy hisses.

“No,” Kun insists. “Not like me, or like Yukhei. Please. Let me tend to your wound. It will become infected.”

“All men are the same,” he says. “You will hurt me like all the others.”

“Is that why you killed all those men? To hurt them first?”

“I am beautiful,” the boy says without any sort of pride or emotion in his voice. He is simply stating a fact. “Men cannot help but look. It is their own fault, not mine.”

“You _are_ beautiful,” Kun agrees, even though he’s only seen him in parts. “I wish I could look directly at you." He pauses, gathering up his courage to continue. "If you’re to kill me, can you at least tell me your name so that I may know at whose hands I have fallen?”

The boy pauses. Kun can see the way his chest tightens, the way his hands curl into fists. The blindfold hangs loose around the boy’s neck. In the background, Yukhei is still struggling and grunting, but Kun focuses all of his attention on the boy, this captivating mystery. He sees now why it is that his shoulders catch the light: scales like a serpent’s form a nearly-crystalline layer over his skin. It is invisible in some places, but then it’s not. It’s the most beautiful thing Kun has ever seen.

“Have you no name?” Kun whispers gently.

The boy flinches. “You may call me Ten,” he says. “For the number of men I’ve killed here.”

“Ten,” Kun repeats, trying it out on his tongue. 

“And yours, Doctor?”

Kun smiles. “Qian Kun, from Hong Kong,” he says. “Tell me, Ten, would you like to see it? The city?”

.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! i decided to make this chaptered :)

They sneak Ten back to the inn dressed in a long, flowing cream-colored robe that Yukhei has stolen from a clothesline, the hood of the robe covering half of the boy's face. If the innkeeper suspects anything, she doesn't mention it. The men staying in the inn often bring guests to their rooms for a night or two, and as long as there is no foul play, she'll look the other way. So Kun helps Ten lay down on his cot and, with the medical supplies in his kit, stitches up Ten's wound in his side, careful not to look past the boy's chin, and marvels when, by nightfall, the skin has already knitted together and smoothed over, like the wound was never there to begin with. But Ten's breathing still labors at times, and every once in a while he is wracked with chills and dizzy spells. He languishes in bed, robes slipping from his shoulders, and tells Kun of his muscles aching.

"You've caught a fever," Kun explains patiently to him. He's brought up a plate of raw meat for Ten to eat, and looks away when the boy's sharp, shark-like teeth make an appearance. He discovered on the first day that cooked food made Ten sick.

"I am not susceptible to silly mortal diseases," Ten snaps, and then he sneezes.

Kun hides his grin by biting the inside of his cheek.

It takes four days of rest before Kun agrees that Ten is well enough to travel. Ten hates it, being hidden away in the tiny room that Kun shares with Yukhei in the inn, and complains incessantly of the wet heat. In the mornings, Ten wants a cooling towel for his overheated skin, so Kun must draw one for him; and in the afternoons, he wants to suck the honey from precious honeycombs, so Kun must barter with the cook in the kitchens or in the village market; and at night, when finally the heat abates a little bit, he wants Kun's body close to his so that he can leech the warmth from it, so Kun must lay beside him as Ten traces sharp fingernails lightly over his skin.

“Good Doctor, you promised to tend to me, and take me to see this city of yours,” Ten says sweetly, his voice like a song, when the requests change or he senses Kun’s resistance, and just like that any hesitation on Kun's part melts away.

He does these things so that he can get close to that iridescent skin to study it, Kun tells himself. To understand how it is that Ten can knit himself back together so quickly. To gain favor so that one day Ten will share the secrets of his magic with him, all in the pursuit of the advancement of medicine.

Sometimes, Kun wakes in the morning and knows that Ten is watching him as the pads of his fingers caress the column of Kun’s throat, as the boy places his thumb against the fluttering pulse beating under the doctor’s skin.

Ten could kill him easily, so it must mean something that he has not.

"If he asked you to strip naked and run through the market yelling obscenities, you'd do it, too," Yukhei says. He only returns to the room now at night to sleep, wary of their guest, even though by the second day Ten has picked up the habit of wearing a blindfold around his eyes when the soldier is around.

Right now, Kun and Yukhei are having a simple breakfast of thin congee and fish together; mornings are a time reserved for the two of them, as Ten prefers not to rise before noon, and Yukhei has other things to do around the village, like throwing the villagers off their trail with stories of the beast's escape and ensuring they are prepared for their journey by ship back to Hong Kong.

"I would not," Kun replies, offended, even though secretly he thinks that if it would please Ten, he would.

"He's enchanted you," Yukhei says next.

Kun sighs into his bowl. He's had this thought also; it flits around his head like an unwanted fly. But it's the truth when he says, "If he has, I would thank him for it."

.

The ship’s cabins are small and limited in number, reserved usually only for government officials and other men of stature, but Yukhei brings a letter affixed with Kun’s doctor’s stamp and signature upon it in red to the captain, flashes his best, toothful smile, and they are promised a small cabin on the starboard side.

“I’ve told the captain you’re a patient of mine, and that you require a private space to recover,” Kun explains to Ten as they make their final preparations to travel back to Kun’s home. “You’ve just had surgery, and so you’re weak and your eyes are very sensitive,” Kun continues, pointing to the blindfold -- still black, but new and now made of soft linen -- hanging slack around Ten’s neck.

“You want me to feign weakness?” Ten asks, though it doesn’t sound like a question, the way he says it. He’s propped on his side on the cot, robe slipping off his shoulder to reveal the tantalizing shadows that live within the curves and dips of his collarbones, the scales covering his skin shimmering like he’s been dusted in glitter.

“We don’t have time to forge papers for you,” Kun says as he folds the few articles of clothing he’s brought with him and stacks them inside of his leather suitcase. “It’s the quickest and easiest way to get you on the ship with us.”

There isn’t too much to pack, as traveling every summer for the past five years has helped Kun hone his possessions down to the essentials, and Yukhei seemingly is able to subsist on next to nothing. Kun’s released the other members of his staff from their commitment to him for the remainder of summer, so they can choose to return with him to the city, or stay in the village and continue to work, or find some other way to spend their leisure time.

“Papers,” Ten scoffs. “Weakness.” He flops back onto the cot and spreads his limbs in a luxurious stretch. “What makes you think I’ll do as you ask? I could just as easily kill everyone on that ship. Then we can board it, you and I, with no need for papers or pretense.”

Kun closes the lid on his suitcase and ensures the snaps are closed, trying not to let the casual remarks of murder get to him. Sometimes, Ten reminds him of one of his apprentices in Hong Kong, a precocious kid named Chenle with a bright future ahead of him if he could only learn when it isn't appropriate to show off the sharpness of his tongue. Both keep testing the boundaries of Kun's patience. He looks up at Ten carefully, never fully meeting his eyes. He’s grown accustomed to seeing him in parts -- the curve of his shoulder, his cropped black hair, his long fingers, his taut, smooth belly -- and shudders to think of how overwhelmed he would be to see Ten whole. “For one thing, I can’t steer a ship, so we won’t be going anywhere in that scenario, much less Hong Kong.”

“We’ll bring the soldier,” Ten suggests, sitting up slightly. His lips curl into a smirk. “He’ll prove useful as a navigator and, eventually, a meal.”

“For another thing,” Kun adds quickly, “I'll remind you now that you _cannot_ eat Yukhei. He’s my good friend.”

Ten pouts, his bottom lip swollen and shiny. Kun clears his throat and scans the small room for any belongings he has missed, but the shelves and drawers are now empty.

Ten sighs. “Fine. I shall not eat Yukhei for now, but only because I don’t want to.”

“Thank you,” Kun offers graciously. “Now, we must go if we’re to make it before the ship leaves.”

.

They board the ship without too much scrutiny, Ten dressed in Kun's clothes that hang a little loosely off his smaller frame. The white shirt and linen pants cover his skin from neck to ankle, and a wide-brimmed hat along with the blindfold over his eyes shields his gaze from onlookers. His hand in the doctor's, they stroll across the deck, and covered as he is, Ten still draws the curiosity of nearly everyone they pass, some even openly staring. He is magnetic in that way, and Kun wonders if it is due to his magic or if it's simply because of his evocative beauty.

Halfway across the deck, Kun notices how Ten's hand trembles slightly in his palm as they take careful steps forward, Yukhei clearing the way ahead of them, and so he tightens his grip on the other, reassuring him without words. Ten’s thinned, tight grimace gives way to a sly grin.

“Scared I'll run off?” Ten asks, playful and light.

“Terrified,” Kun says, choosing not to address how Ten's fingers are now still and calm in his own. “But you'd have a hard time of it; everyone is looking at you.”

A scoff. Ten licks his lips, exposing the needle tips of his fangs. “It is expected. They want what they can't have.”

Which makes Kun's face heat as his heart drums faster in his chest, thinking of having Ten, what that would mean, what it would feel like, his cool body pressed against his own.

They walk through the throngs of people on deck and head below to the cabins, where there are fewer people but more obstacles in their way. Stacks of suitcases in front of cabin doors narrow the long corridor ahead of them, and men come in and out of their rooms, some of them already accustomed to stooping over due to the low ceilings of the cabins. All the while, the ship rocks gently with the shifting weight of its passengers.

“Stay close,” Kun says to Ten, guiding him around a pile of suitcases to his left, walking so that their hips knock against each other.

“Don’t _pull_ me,” Ten snaps, but there is no real fire to his words, and then in the next moment the ship tips heavily to one side, and Ten buckles against him with a soft exhalation.

Kun wraps his arms around Ten’s slim waist securely. “I’ve got you.”

Yukhei looks over his shoulder at them, slowing his pace when he sees the way Kun carefully releases Ten, keeping a balancing grip on the boy's elbow. “Our cabin’s just at the end of the corridor.” Yukhei grins. “Keep your knees bent. It’ll help with your balance.”

When they straighten again, Ten grumbles under his breath so that only Kun to hear, “Daily, he tests me. And daily, I keep my promise to you not to eat him.”

.

The journey is three days and two nights, with a stopover in a larger port city in the South China Sea to load up on cargo and goods before making another stop in Macau, and then finally disembarking in Hong Kong. There are three bunks in their small cabin, a set of twin bunks on one side with a thin metal ladder leading up to the higher bunk, and one on the other side with space below to store their suitcases. This single bunk, Yukhei claims. A table that folds up into the wall is hidden just behind the door, and they find a chair that can be folded flat when it isn't in use under Yukhei’s bed. Since their cabin is on the starboard side of the ship, the small, circular window above the narrow twin bunks looks out onto the sea.

Yukhei makes himself scarce as soon as they settle in, no doubt making fast friends with members of the crew. For much of the afternoon, the doctor sits at the small table, a portable gas lamp lit and hanging above his head to give him some light as he pores over the records and notes he has made from his travels in front of him. He helped a woman overcome a wet cough that had plagued her for weeks. He set many broken bones. He mixed herbal remedies and ground them into fine powders for the sick and the weary to eat by the spoonful. He stitched the wound in Ten’s side, and it healed within a few hours. This one, he does not write into his records.

Ten is quiet throughout, keeping himself to the top bunk and listlessly staring out the little window, delicate fingers absently playing with the blindfold hanging around his neck. Kun can't begin to imagine the thoughts running through Ten's head, but he recognizes the melancholy in the other's prone form and long sighs. Ten is leaving the village, after all, and Kun can’t be sure how long he’s made a home there.

When he's reached a good stopping point with his notes, he looks up at Ten staring out at the sea, the curve of his shoulder like calligraphy, his hair inky black in the wavering light of the gas lamp, and he imagines calling out to him softly, imagines Ten peering over his shoulder at him, his profile sharp and beautiful. What color would his eyes be, Kun wonders. He wishes he could see.

Instead, Kun keeps his eyes on his notes and asks quietly, “Will you miss it? The village? The mountains?”

When Ten answers, he speaks his words as though each is an arrow shot from a bow. “I have never been happier to leave something behind.”

.


	3. Chapter 3

Yukhei returns when the sun has sunk low over the horizon, painting the sea the colors of fire, golden oranges and bright reds and yellows. He comes bearing steamed buns from the kitchens and a glowing smile on his face.

“Thought you'd be here still. Have you not left the cabin all day?”

Kun looks up from his notes and then at Ten pointedly, who is so still staring out the window that he might as well be a statue of his own making. They haven't spoken much. After a short conversation, Kun had gone back to his notes and Ten to sighing and, Kun thinks, dozing occasionally to the rocking motion of the boat. Kun had contemplated leaving the cabin for a stroll, but Ten had not seemed inclined to move and Kun had not been inclined to leave him.

Yukhei shrugs in response. He tosses the doctor one of the buns, and Kun fumbles to catch it, burning the tips of his fingers on it. The bun is soft and a little too wet for Kun's liking, sticky against his fingers, but it will fill his stomach for the night before they reach their first stop early tomorrow morning.

“Sorry, I didn't get you one,” Yukhei says flippantly to Ten.

Ten exhales in exasperation. “I ate yesterday,” he says simply. “I don't need to feed as you humans do.”

Yukhei bugs out his eyes at Kun, mouths something with exaggerated movements of his lips that the older man can't interpret. After mouthing the words a few times, Yukhei gives up, flopping himself onto his single bunk with his steamed bun, and munches into it, demolishing almost half of it in one huge bite. “My uncle kept snakes,” Yukhei says without any tact. Maybe that's a kind of tact in itself. “You remind me of them. Cold and fanged.”

Ten says nothing, but the thin sheets over his bunk whisper as he shifts slightly.

Yukhei opens his mouth again after swallowing. “I _said--_ ”

“I heard what you said,” Ten hisses, waspish and agitated, whipping his gaze around his shoulder at the soldier. Instantly, Yukhei drops his eyes to his knees, frozen on an inhale. “You are not the first to say such things.” Kun notices the way Ten's jaw works like he's grinding his teeth, how his shoulders curl like he's trying to make himself smaller. In the light of the gas lamp, the delicate scales covering his honey-toned skin flash gold, almost like a warning sign. After a tense moment, Ten looks away again, out at the sea now dark and churning as the sun has sunk below the waves, and finishes quietly, “I wasn't always like this.”

“You could have killed me,” Yukhei complains.

“Yes, I could have,” Ten quips in a far-off voice, sinking deeper into the bed.

Kun adds, “But you didn't.” He shoots Yukhei a glare for his careless remarks, and his friend only raises his eyebrows in response.

“What? So now he gets a prize for not killing me?”

Kun chooses to ignore the question, paying attention instead to the slow rise and fall of Ten’s back as he breathes. Curiosity piqued, he stands and brings himself closer to the boy, until he can rest his elbows on the thin mattress of the bunk. Ten doesn’t move, though his scales glisten and ripple across his skin, reflecting shards of light. “Ten,” he begins, “What did you mean that you haven’t always been like this?”

Ten groans and turns his face against the wall, away from them both. “I don’t want to tell you.”

“Perhaps,” Yukhei says, voice full of glib wonder and inquiry as he finishes his bun, “he hatched from an egg. I’ve seen them at my uncle’s, when I was a boy, poking their heads out of their shells, tiny creatures. Forked tongues flicking…”

“Leave me alone,” Ten says. Under Kun’s shirt on his back, the doctor can see his shoulder blades tighten.

“I’m only teasing,” Yukhei explains, looking to Kun for camaraderie. But he’ll find none right now. Kun’s eyes are steely and lips pinched tightly together when he looks back at him. “Huh, he’s as cold as he looks. Reptilian, even.”

“ _Get out._ ” Ten's voice is like a gust of wind blowing through the cabin. The temperature drops suddenly, just like it had in the cave, and the little hairs on Kun’s arms begin to rise.

“Yukhei, I think you should leave,” Kun says in the chill that follows.

Yukhei stands, his eyes wide as he faces the doctor. “Four years I’ve been with you, through summer and winter and everything in between,” he says, “And I’ve never questioned you before, but I’m questioning you now.” The temperature continues to drop, and it’s so cold now that when Yukhei speaks, his breath crystallizes in front of him. “You haven’t thought this through.”

Kun shivers, herding the taller man towards the door. “Maybe you’re right,” he admits, glancing back to the boy in the bunk. He hates the way Ten has curled up, knees drawn to his chest. “But it would have been wrong to leave him there. You know that.”

At the door, Yukhei pauses as they face each other. His lips drag down at the corners, and Kun feels his heart clench as he registers the dark circles under his friend’s eyes and the pallor of his cheeks. Yukhei looks exhausted and ragged from the events of the past few days -- his loyal soldier spreading rumors around the village of Ten's escape, leading men on wild, fruitless chases to cover their tracks, and yet, this is the first time that Kun has noticed, so focused was he on Ten. His mind has been occupied by Ten, Ten, Ten.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Yukhei. “I’m sorry. You've done so much to help and now I'm asking you to do a little more. To trust me. Please. Things will be alright. You’ll see.”

The door creaks as it opens, and the cool air flows out, heavy and sinking. Humidity returns into the cabin, clogging their breaths. Yukhei clutches at Kun’s bicep before they part and brings him close so that he can whisper into his ear, “You treat him like he’s one of your patients. But he isn’t gentle. He’s a killer. And you shouldn’t forget that.”

After Yukhei leaves, slowly the temperature returns to normal, but Ten still shivers under the threadbare covers they’re provided for their bunks. He looks cold, smooth as marble, and Kun knows from nights they shared at the inn folding his body against Ten's that the blood running through the other's veins is thick and slow, dense with something ancient and without name. The doctor lingers by the beds, uncertain how Ten would react if he were to reach out to touch him. How badly he wants to reach out to touch him.

“He doesn't mean anything by it,” Kun tries.

“He thinks I'm a monster,” Ten returns. “And he's right. I am one, though not by my own choosing.”

“I don't think you're a monster.”

Ten laughs, soft and dark and bitter, his shoulders shaking gently. “Come, Doctor,” he says, beckoning with a lazy hand behind him, “I'm cold.”

.

Yukhei doesn’t return that night, and it surprises Kun that Ten is the one to ask about his whereabouts. Ten, who has pulled the doctor around him like a blanket in the top bunk, wrapping warmth around himself in the form of Kun's body. The short hairs at the nape of Ten’s neck move with Kun’s breaths. His arm draped over Ten’s belly, Kun doesn’t dare move.

“Will he come back?” Ten asks. After laying in quiet for so long with only the creaking sounds of the ship as it rocks in the waves for company, Ten’s voice feels loud.

Kun shifts a little closer. He could press his lips to the top of Ten’s spine, the distance between them not even a centimeter. “Not tonight, no.”

“He’s angry with you?” the boy asks. Kun almost flinches back when he feels Ten move, but Ten tuts and holds onto Kun’s arm with both hands, keeping him in place. “Calm yourself, Doctor. It’s just that my legs are cold.” Kun gasps when Ten’s freezing cold feet touch his bare ankles under the fabric of his thin linen pants.

“He’s a little angry,” Kun says as Ten gradually warms himself against Kun’s body. It is so hard staying still with Ten shifting and curling and rubbing against him, but he must not move for the sake of his own integrity. He clenches his teeth to help bear it. “It’s not a worry. He’ll be over it soon. We’ve survived through worse.”

“Worse than _me_?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” Ten says, sighing. With both hands, he starts to play with Kun’s fingers, lining their palms up together and slotting their fingers together, tracing Kun’s knuckles with a sharp nail. “You’re close with him, the soldier.”

“We served together. There is very little we wouldn't do for each other,” Kun says. He pauses, aware of Ten's slow, deep breaths, his cool fingers drawing patterns on Kun's forearm. He wonders if there is anyone Ten could call friend. If Ten has a family. Before finding him behind the waterfall, before the men in the village -- what had Ten's life been like then? Who has treated Ten kindly, and who has treated him like a monster? _All men are the same,_ he’d said in the cave. _You will hurt me like all the others._

Some hurts do not show on the skin, Kun knows, and he wonders what it's taking for Ten to lay so still in Kun's arms, when Kun is a man after all.

“Yukhei saved my life once, you know,” he says softly, like coaxing an animal from the bushes. “We were retreating but I was a medic and there was a boy just laying in the field who needed my help badly. The problem was his leg. It wasn't fatal, just needed some bandaging and support. I thought I could save him… Yukhei pulled me out of the way when the shell hit.”

“Did the other boy make it?”

Kun shakes his head sadly. Though he'd been able to save many lives during the war, there were equally as many that he couldn't save. “No, he didn't.”

“I see.” A pause. “Do you ever wish Yukhei had saved the boy instead?”

Kun is quiet. He traces the angle of Ten's nose beyond the plump slope of his cheek. He's thought about it, in passing. What would the boy be doing now if Yukhei had saved him instead? Would they be friends, the boy and Yukhei, as the doctor and Yukhei are? A part of Kun reasons that if the boy had been saved instead, Kun wouldn't have been able to go on and save others as the war sluggishly trickled toward its end. In the order of things in battle, Kun is more highly valued than a foot soldier. Foot soldiers like that are replaceable, after all. Kun doesn't like to dwell on these thoughts or this part of him that is naturally inclined to think this way. That maybe, just maybe, he's better. That he _deserved_ to be saved.

“No,” he answers Ten truthfully. “Never.”

Ten sucks in a breath as Kun's arm curls tighter around him. “So you're a selfish man.”

“Is it wrong to want to live?”

“I don't know,” Ten says. He chuckles, and Kun can feel the vibrations of his low laughter against his chest. “Maybe it's wrong when you've lived as long as I have. It's unnatural.”

“Do you wish we had left you behind the waterfall?” Kun whispers.

“No,” Ten says, a single word on the edge of something deeper.

Kun senses it, the urge to say more like teetering at the ledge of a cliff-face. Sometimes, the need to jump is all too real. He tries to will himself larger, to cover more of Ten with his body, to shield him with his warmth. “Then, what?”

He waits for Ten to respond. Outside, the moon is gibbous and fat, hanging low in the sky. Kun wonders if Ten’s scales would shine silver in the moonlight, glimmering like dew drops in the grass.

Ten says, “Have you heard this story, Doctor?" He continues as though reading from the pages of a book. "There was once a boy who served in the temple. He was beautiful, and everyone knew it. Even the gods. What’s more -- he could dance like the gods had blessed his feet and hands. He was so beautiful that everyone wanted to take part in that beauty, to pluck it like a ripe fruit. And so they did. When the gods heard what had happened to the boy in the temple, they grew jealous of this form of twisted worship, and they blamed the boy for what had happened to him. They cursed him and made him into a monster. He kept his beauty, but anyone who looked at him would turn to stone.”

A weight presses down on his chest, forcing the breath from his lungs, as Kun pictures it. Ten would look beautiful dancing, his movements graceful and full of purpose, and everyone would watch. He imagines Ten's smile without bitterness or malice, his incisors without their needle points, his skin soft and golden. His heart squeezes painfully inside of his rib cage. “Oh, Ten…”

“I became a monster. A conquest. A test of bravery. At first, I fought back. I did. But I’ve grown tired, Doctor.”

“So rest,” Kun says, lips buried against Ten's nape. “With me. You can rest.”

Ten clutches Kun’s hand in his, bringing it against his sternum and tucking his chin over their interlaced fingers. “Do you wish to conquer me, too?” he asks.

“No,” Kun says.

He feels a sharpness against his knuckles, then the feather soft press of Ten’s lips against his skin. “You lie,” Ten says, but he doesn’t let go.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhh i'm sorry


	4. Chapter 4

“Doctor.” The word rushes like wind into his ears, and Kun wakes with a snap, eyes flying open, only for the palm of a cool hand to press against them, the touch light against the bridge of his nose. Darkness again. “Shh, be careful, Doctor.”

He can feel Ten smiling, smirking, can feel his breath puff and break across his own lips. He’s so close and every part of Kun aches to press against him. It feels like even the hairs on his legs are magnetized toward Ten. But Kun lays still, and licks his dry lips. “Is it morning already?” 

“It is,” Ten whispers. “We’ve docked. Will you take me above for a walk and some air?” he asks in that way of his, a command in the form of a question. The tone of his voice is playful, coquettish, but Kun can sense the sharpness behind the words.

“Of course,” Kun agrees. Only then does Ten’s hand lift away from his eyes. Still, Kun keeps his eyes screwed shut, just in case. The cot shifts a little as Ten sits up and groans, dragging the covers with him. Feeling safe now, Kun peeks open one eye, only to be met with the smooth plane of Ten’s naked back, scales shimmering in the pure morning light. A crease forms in the space between Ten’s shoulder blades as he stretches his arms high above his head, a happy little noise leaving his lips. Kun flushes and sits up with the speed of a racehorse leaving the gate at the sound of a crack, turning away just as quickly. “Have you undressed?” he asks, a little rushed and breathless.

Ten laughs, the sound like crystals shaking in a chandelier. “Only the shirt,” he says. “It was getting so stuffy under the covers. You positively _radiate_ warmth.”

“Uh, I,” Kun stutters, turning redder and redder by the second. “That is--”

“Don’t bother with your society’s proprieties, Doctor. They don’t apply to me.”

“Be that as it may,” Kun starts, still a little breathless. He huffs, trying to gather his thoughts. “That is, they still apply to _me._ And I’d like to know if I’ve spent the night in bed with someone in such a state of undress.”

“Doctor,” Ten purrs. His fingernails trace a line across the back of Kun’s shoulders, and the doctor shivers under the touch before going still. “You’re _adorable._ I could eat you up. I’ll put my shirt on for you. There, will that do it?”

Kun doesn’t look, of course. He doesn’t want Ten to see how red in the face he is, nor how flustered. Instead, he clambers down on the ladder and steps onto the floor with steady legs. “You must dress anyway,” Kun says, clearing his throat a few times to get it to work properly again. “If we’re to go above deck, maybe even into town if you promise to behave.”

“Oh, must I?” Ten chimes, but he’s shifting on the bunk and dressing, the fabric of his sleeves long and flowing. He keeps his eyes down as he climbs the ladder, carefully looking away as he faces Kun. "I promise to behave," he says in a tone that promises misbehavior.

Underneath the sweep of Ten’s eyelashes, Kun can make out flecks of gold. His irises, perhaps? He dares not look too long -- he imagines already that he can feel his blood pooling in his legs and turning to stone. Still, the idea of the blindfold, of forcing darkness of Ten, makes a knot form in his chest, hard to swallow around. “I don’t like that blindfold,” Kun admits. “Can you not just keep your eyes down, like this?”

Ten’s lips form a sweet little moue, tops of his cheeks glittering. “Do you trust me so much?”

Kun remembers Yukhei’s words of warning at the door last night, the look in his friend’s eyes. He could not bear it if anyone were hurt due to carelessness. He exhales slowly. “I trust you, of course. But perhaps for everyone else’s sake, the blindfold stays.”

Ten pouts, but doesn’t protest when Kun finds the slip of fabric and helps him tie it around his eyes.

“It’s not too tight, is it?”

A breath. Ten says, “It is like a chain.”

Kun winces, unable to respond. He touches Ten’s shoulder gently, biting his lip when the other jumps at the contact, then slides his hand down the length of his arm until he can take Ten’s hand into his. “Only for a little while longer, I promise.”

.

It’s bright above deck, the sun glancing off the various surfaces of the boat, throwing harsh light directly into Kun’s eyes. After just a night cooped up in cabins, the chance to stretch his legs has Kun’s blood pumping, and he has to stop himself from running and dragging Ten to the first empty space along the bow that he spots. Instead, he holds Ten’s hand and carefully guides him through a thin crush of people roaming the deck in the open air.

When they reach the edge, facing the sea, he takes Ten’s hands and places them on the railing. The breeze coming off the water makes the tails of Ten’s blindfold flutter behind him, and the boy reaches up with a soft giggle when the wind gushes forth and threatens to lift the wide-brimmed hat from his head. Kun watches him, how he stands so poised and balanced, his shoulders low, the curve of his spine elegant and long under the fabric of Kun’s shirt. He lifts his face up with a small smile to feel the heat of the sun on his skin.

Strange, how Kun is almost half a head taller than Ten, but when he stands beside him, he feels small.

“We are looking at the sea,” Kun says. “You can take off the blindfold.”

Ten grins, revealing the sharp points of his teeth, ducking his face again before undoing the strap behind his head. The blindfold falls away, nestled in the grip of his hand, and when he faces the sun again his smile is wide and unrestrained.

Kun tries to remember how to breathe. He knows Yukhei worries for his judgment and sanity, worries that he’s brought a monster into their midst, but how can he think that Ten is nothing but a cold-blooded beast when he looks as bright and warm as though he’d swallowed all the stars in the sky? “Ten,” Kun says into the wind. “You look radiant.”

“What was that, Doctor?”

Kun smiles, close-lipped. “You heard me.”

Ten squares up his shoulders, the curve in his lips turning smug. “I wanted to hear it again.”

He would say it again, as many times as Ten wants, but in that moment he sees a familiar head of hair over Ten’s shoulder. Yukhei walks to the boat's edge not twenty paces down from them, looking cross and stern. They make eye contact, and Yukhei is the first to break it, turning away and stalking off a couple more steps with stomping feet.

“I must make amends.” Kun sighs. “I see Yukhei.”

Ten frowns. “He’ll come to you, won’t he?”

Kun shakes his head, puts his hand over Ten’s and finds the cool skin comforting. “I think this time, it’s me who needs to be doing a bit of groveling.” He pauses, considering Ten and tripping over how to phrase his next question. “Will you -- would you -- er.”

“Spit it out.”

“I don’t think he’ll take it well if you’re with me when I apologize. Would you mind waiting here for a while for me?”

Ten dances his fingers up Kun’s palm, his wrist, his forearm. He pauses in the tender dip of the inside of Kun’s elbow. The way he brushes his nails over the thin skin there feels like a kiss, like the epicenter of an earthquake that trembles all throughout his arm and his body. “Wherever would I go, Doctor?” he asks. “Go to him, then. And come back to me whole.”

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kun is an idiot (in love)


	5. Chapter 5

“Yukhei -- Yukhei, please don’t do this.”

Kun sighs in exasperation when, once again, Yukhei strides away from him with his long legs as Kun nears. They’ve been around the whole perimeter of the boat once already like this, Kun approaching, Yukhei avoiding and throwing betrayed expressions over his shoulder at his friend.

“Will you stop following me?” Yukhei hisses around his hand-rolled cigarette when Kun springs forward in an attempt to surprise him into closing the distance between them.

“Will you stop being a child? I want to talk.”

“Well, I  _ don’t  _ want to.”

“Please, friend,” Kun says, raising his voice a little when Yukhei tries to move away again. “Friend of four years and more. Comrade. Soldier. You were the best soldier in our unit. The very, very best. And also my best friend.”

Yukhei stills, his back to Kun, his shoulders stiff and nearly against his ears. Smoke rises from the top of his head like he’s a chimney. Finally, he turns around with a long, drawn out breath and exhalation around his cigarette, and he folds himself over the banister at the ship’s edge. He takes the cigarette between his fingers and flicks it out into the sea. “Fine. Speak.”

Kun matches shoulders with him, nudging him slightly, and Yukhei chuckles sheepishly. “I don’t like it when we fight.”

“You shouldn’t have picked up a monster in your travels, then.”

“He’s not a monster,” Kun reminds Yukhei gently. “He truly isn’t, you know? He told me his story.”

“Which is?”

Kun hesitates. It's not really his story to tell, but he thinks he can still share some of the details. “He...was cursed. To live as a monster. To be hunted and hurt, over and over again. And for nothing. As retribution for the petty jealousies of a god.”

Yukhei says nothing, and for a moment Kun wonders how crazy he sounds recounting Ten’s story, the myth of his origins. But there is no doubt Ten is magical, and he has no reasons not to believe him. 

“He could be lying,” Yukhei says, finally.

“I don’t think that he is.”

A balmy breeze rises from the water, and they smell salt in the air. Yukhei scoffs, kicking at the edge of the ship with the toe of his boot. “I worry about you. You have a soft heart.”

“We’re off the battlefield now, Yukhei,” Kun says softly, so soft he wonders if the breeze has picked up and carried off his words, but Yukhei hums in response, nodding to himself. “You don’t have to look out for me like that anymore.”

“Of course I do,” Yukhei snaps. He looks at Kun with wide eyes full of earnestness. “You’re my friend. It’s what friends do. I just hate when you put yourself in danger over...things of little consequence.”

“Ten is not of little consequence.” Yukhei bristles like a dog on the verge of growling and barking, and Kun puts his hand on the taller man’s shoulder and squeezes in an attempt to assuage him before it comes to that. “I couldn’t rightfully -- morally or ethically -- leave him uncared for. You know that.”

“It doesn’t mean you have to take him under your wing. Bring him around like he’s some pet.”

Kun flushes, eyes dropping to the water splashing against the sides of the boat under them. This close to land, the water is thick and gray with sediment. Here and there, he spots the flickering of silver scales under the surface. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Isn’t it?” Yukhei asks, pointedly, a knowing tilt to his eyebrows and slant to his lips. “You’ve always loved lost causes. A good charity case.”

“Ten,” Kun starts, thinking hard, “Ten would never accept charity.”

Yukhei laughs loud and abrupt, doubling over on top of the banister. “He’s using you to get to the next place. The next village. Where he’ll probably kill again.”

“He’s not,” Kun insists. “He just needs...to be reintegrated back into society. It’s been so hard for him, it’s not his fault--”

“Good Lord, Qian Kun,” Yukhei interrupts, making Kun’s mouth snap shut with the sudden gravity of his full name, “do you hear yourself right now?” Kun folds his hands into tight fists, his nails digging into his palms, shame crawling all over his heated skin at being spoken to like a silly schoolboy. Yukhei’s words are like little daggers piercing his heart. “I’ll speak frankly, because we’re friends. You think he will love you back because you’ve shown him that men can be kind, that you can fix his rage, his bloodthirst, borne from years of horrors like that cave we found him in. But you’re wrong. That sort of thing never leaves men like us. There’s no amount of love or care that can change what we’ve seen, what we’ve done, what we’ve had done to us. You said earlier that we’re off the battlefield, now. But truthfully, it’s a place I’ll never be able to leave behind.”

Kun feels like Yukhei punched him right in the gut. Winded and breathless, gasping for air, he can’t bring himself to look up into Yukhei’s eyes.

The soldier says, “Where is the little beast, anyway?”

Kun whirls around where he stands, eyes landing on the spot where he’d left Ten. His stomach drops to his feet. 

Ten is not there.

He looks around wildly, scanning the deck for that familiar, slight figure, but he sees nothing. Yukhei, sensing his distress, stands upright and looks at Kun in concern.

“Everything alright?”

“I,” Kun stutters. “I -- I left him there.” He points to the spot near the bow. “He said he’d wait for me.”

“And you believed him?” his friend asks incredulously.

“Yukhei!” Kun shouts, panic rising to his chest. “He could have been taken! Please -- we have to find him.”

Yukhei nods, expression shuttering immediately, lips pressed into a thin line. “Fine. You check below to see if he went back to the cabin. I’ll ask around up here to see if anyone’s seen him. Don’t take long.”

Kun is dismissed with a wave of Yukhei’s hand, and he dashes off to the stairs leading down into the belly of the ship. He checks the halls for Ten, and peers into the other cabins, and knocks on closed doors to ask if anyone has seen a slender boy wearing a blindfold wandering around. No one has. He checks their own cabin, and finds nothing but rumpled sheets in the top bunk. He sprints back up to the deck, pulse racing and hairline damp with sweat. Where could Ten have gone? Did someone see him and take him? Was he in danger? Kun promised to protect him, to keep him safe. Ten had been counting on him--

“Oi!” Yukhei waves both arms in the air, catching Kun’s attention at the side of the boat. He’s standing by the boarding area, where a wide plank reaches from the boat's edge to the docks. Kun jogs over to him, searching the area for Ten still. “Someone said they saw a pretty little thing amble off the boat into town,” Yukhei says.

Kun looks at him, unhearing, not quite believing. “What?”

“Ten walked,” Yukhei says without expression or emotion. “Do you want to look for him, or not?”

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short update sorry ;A;


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some violence in this chapter!

Compared to the village they left between the mountains, the town is bustling with activity. Past the initial row of buildings facing the sea, a market square emerges, and instantly the smells of grilling meat, fermented sauces and pickled foods hit Kun's and Yukhei's noses. It's not yet noon but the market is crowded, the myriad stalls in crowded rows busy with lines of people wanting and waiting to buy the goods behind the counters. All around them, customers and sellers barter over each other, haggling prices and trades. Kun bursts into the market with wide eyes and jerky movements, gaze darting every which way in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Ten.

“He was wearing the hat,” Kun tells Yukhei, who trails behind him like a shadow as he walks, keeping pace with him. “A white shirt. The blindfold was in his hands.”

“Very descriptive,” Yukhei says drily.

“It's all I've got,” Kun says with desperation. He feels like he can't quite get enough air into his lungs, and still Ten is nowhere to be seen. When had he gone? Was it after the first time he circled the deck, foolishly chasing Yukhei like a dog chasing its own tail? Kun strides past a stall selling silks, a stall selling jars of pickled pigs feet, a stall selling fatty, dripping hunks of barbecued pork. “Why would he run?” Kun asks to himself, and then repeats the question aloud.

Yukhei sighs. “Kun--”

The doctor’s eyes catch on familiar movement two stalls down. The bend of an elbow, the flick of a delicate wrist. He sees Ten looking at a spread of handmade fans crafted from lace and bamboo spread across the counter of a small stall in front of an older woman with laughter lines around her eyes, her gray hair tied up in a bun.

“Ten!” he cries out, surging forward toward him.

Ten flinches, hand darting out to take one of the fans on the counter. He leans forward and whispers something to the lady, who smiles serenely and nods at him. Then he turns and disappears into the crowd, slipping through bodies like an eel.

“No--!” Kun begins to run, pushing against the crowd that seems to close in around him. He feels Yukhei pressing against his back to help him forward. Through the bodies, he see a flash of Ten’s back, the curve of his shoulder, the sharp edge of his jaw, the slope of his nose. He flickers through the crowd like a flame in the wind. “Wait!”

The crowd thickens, slowly, purposefully, and soon it feels like Kun is trying to wade through a pool of oozing molasses. It’s hot pressed between this crush of bodies, and his shirt sticks to his back like a second skin. The sun beats down on them, directly overhead, leaving no room for shadows.

A whisper overtakes the weak wind above them. _J_ _ust like all the others_ , Kun hears through ears suddenly full of pressure, all sounds muffled as though his ears have been stuffed with cotton. He pushes and pushes against the people, through them, and then: the ringing starts. It drowns out all other noise, only to be overtaken as the voices of the crowd rise together in one murmur, words slurring together like paint mixing in water. _Like all the others, like all the others._ One voice rises above the rest, light and sweet, as clear as a ripple in a still lake. Kun shudders when he hears it.  _Doctor_ , Ten whispers as though he's right beside him. _You are just like the rest._

“I'm not!” Kun says, gritting his teeth and pushing free of the barrier of people before him, landing in an open alley. Yukhei stumbles out of the throng behind him, nearly toppling Kun over when he knocks into him.

“What was that?” Yukhei gasps angrily, cuffing his own ears as though trying to unstop them. Kun doesn’t know. He watches as the crowd thins. The ringing stops.

Someone screams. A boy. Kun whips his head around, trying to pinpoint the origin of the desperate sound, following the dying echo of it as though pulled by a string. He races to the end of the alley, turning sharply to the right into a dead end, the walls of the buildings on either side meeting a tall wooden fence between them. A boy and a man struggle over a pouch in the boy’s arms.

“Get off me!” the boy screams, his cries cut off when the man backhands him across the face. He stumbles to the side into the wall, the pouch ripped from his hands.

“Hey!” Kun shouts, but it barely registers.

“Get lost. There’s nothing to see here,” the man grunts.

The boy pushes himself off the wall, eyes wide and wild, as he takes stock of Kun and Yukhei before him and realizes they can help. He points a frantic finger at the man. “He’s stealin--!”

A hard shove shuts the boy up, and the man bears down on him, growling. “It’s not stealing when I’m just taking what you owe.”

“We need it!” the boy says. “You can’t take the money yet. It’s not ready. We need more time!”

“Gave you enough time!” He rears his fist back. Kun darts forward with intent, but Yukhei is already there, hooking his arm around the aggressor's neck and wrestling him to the ground. The thug lets out a garbled cry, kicking his legs out, but the surprise of the attack gives Yukhei the leverage he needs to throw him onto his back and dig his knee into his chest, keeping him there. The man curses at the soldier, his face red and breath heaving, spittle flying when he shouts, “Who the hell do you think you are!”

“Who are you?” Yukhei spits back, “Beating up on a little kid?”

“I’m not little!” the boy refutes.

“Not helping,” Yukhei snaps.

Kun holds his hand out for the kid, and is surprised when he comes to him quickly with hurried steps, stooping over on the way to scoop up the precious pouch and hug it to his chest. Kun hears the clinking of coins inside. The kid can’t be older than thirteen, a skinny thing with dirt on his face, and he hides half of himself behind Kun’s arm.

“He and his brother owe me money!”

The boy sticks his tongue out at the man under Yukhei’s knee. “Old man,” he teases. “We said we’d get it to you!”

“Argh! You’re dead!” the man responds, flailing under Yukhei, who grunts with the effort of keeping him down. “You and your brother are dead!”

Which is when Kun hears another scream, and then pain explodes across the back of his skull, knocking him to his knees, the blow rendering him momentarily sightless. He’s reminded of the cave where they found Ten. In the sudden darkness, he hears Yukhei cursing, more blows landing, the voices and shouts of multiple men. The ground seems to turn to water when he tries to rise, and his head throbs and it feels like his brain is leaking out of his ears. He blinks, his vision coming back to him more and more with each painful flutter of his eyelashes. He see three men pushing Yukhei up against the wall, and another pushing around the kid, and another helping the man -- their ringleader, it seems -- off the ground.

Kun doesn’t really know what he can do. As a medic in the army, he’d been trained a little in combat, but is nowhere near as skilled as Yukhei in hand-to-hand. Still, he has to try. He rises up to his feet, swaying unsteadily. “Hey,” he says, his voice broken and weak. He clears his throat and manages to call out more clearly the second time: “Hey!”

Instantly two of the men are on him, knocking him back. Kun puts up his fists and dodges their punches, but is too slow and uncoordinated to hold out for very long. When he's knocked back again and falls against the solid wall as the men close in on him, he knows he’s in for some more pain. He grits his teeth and keeps his fists up even though they’re starting to feel as heavy as lead as the blows land all over his body.

All he wanted to do was look for Ten, and now he’s gotten himself and Yukhei involved in some street gang’s battle. He glances around for the kid between punches and can’t find him. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? He doesn't have time to consider the question, as a fist crashes into his jaw, and Kun has to spit out the blood rapidly filling his mouth.

“You’re not very good at this,” the one pummeling his face says with a twisted laugh.

“I’m,” Kun gasps, blood coating his teeth and tongue. “A doctor.”

“Hah! Funny.” And then he knees Kun in the gut. Kun doubles over with a wheeze, tears jumping into his eyes. Getting beat up hurts so badly. The pain of impact is immediate and sharp, but the dull throbbing after is almost worse. The way it lingers and burns. He wonders how Yukhei is doing. Yukhei might be a good fighter, but one man against three isn’t great odds for anyone. He wants it to end. He’s not sure if his eyes are closed or if he’s been dealt another blow so hard he’s gone temporarily blind again from the shock.

Then someone says, in a voice hypnotizing in its richness, “ _Oh, Doctor._ ”

The fighting stops as though everything in the world has suddenly been encased in ice. Even the wind freezes. Kun shivers, and he blinks, and his breath comes out in front of him as little white clouds. The men, tense and fearful, turn as one in the direction of the alley, where Ten stands with a delicate lace fan shielding his gaze. He has somehow acquired a robe of silk, the fabric dark and rich and flowing from his shoulders down to his ankles. Kun thinks he’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

“What have you done to his face?” Ten asks with an air of innocent inquiry, shifting the fan over just enough for everyone to see the way he pouts. Kun blinks, and Ten flickers closer. Each one of Ten’s steps seems to fold space and time as easily as he is crumpling paper in his fist, or connecting two ends of a string together, and in three strides he is beside Kun at the wall.

“What…?” The man holding Kun’s arms barely has time for his confusion to take root before he’s screaming, holding his neck with both hands where crimson blood is seeping out from between his fingers. He stumbles back and falls to the ground, groaning to himself and crying as blood pumps out from between his fingers at his throat. He rasps when he breaths, his gasps wet and bubbling. Kun straightens slowly, horrified at the violence, at the whites of the man’s eyes.

Ten clicks his tongue and inspects his fingers, now coated in red. “He’ll survive if you take him now,” he says pointedly to the ringleader of the gang. He cocks his head behind his fan, the movement just barely visible. “And perhaps you will, too.”

The remaining men look at Ten in his silk robe and his bloodied fingers, stunned. Shock renders them still. Kun sees how their gazes dart between Ten and their friend on the ground, who's now writhing in a small pool of his own blood. And then Ten shifts the fan to the side again, just enough for them to see the rows of sharp teeth behind his wicked little smile.

Wisely, they grab their fallen and run.

.


	7. Chapter 7

Kun flinches when Ten reaches for him, knocking his head against the rough surface behind him. Bricks dig into his lower back. He sucks in a breath at the sensation of his brain loose in his skull, holding air in his lungs until the dizzy feeling passes. 

Ten closes the fan in a single swipe, his eyes carefully lowered, but Kun can still see the way his eyebrows furrow, the hot flush across his cheeks. The corner of Ten’s mouth twitches. “Afraid of me?” Ten asks, his voice like a whip.

“No,” Kun answers quickly. “Just a reflex.”

“As a doctor, you should be used to blood.” 

Kun’s eyes travel to the dark puddle at Ten’s feet where the man had lain gurgling with his throat torn open. He breathes, with difficulty, feeling a little sick. No matter how quickly those men find shelter, how great their medicine and surgery, Kun holds little hope for that man’s recovery. He remembers the whites of the man's eyes, the way his body twitched. “You’ve killed him,” Kun whispers.

“Only a little bit,” Ten says, coming closer again, slower this time, his hand raised and fingers poised over the jut of Kun’s brow. Kun’s eyelids flutter closed as Ten draws the pad of his thumb over the highest part of his cheekbone, so softly it’s like he’s smoothing a feather over Kun’s skin. “He deserved it. You bruise like fallen fruit.”

“They won’t let you back onto the ship with your hands like that.”

Ten hums in understanding, still touching Kun’s face gently as though testing the yielding quality of his skin. Kun knows Ten is smearing blood over his cheeks, like warpaint. “The boy will come back and let us recover for a while with him,” Ten says, and Kun isn’t sure if it’s because he said it that it will be true, or if it’s because Ten can glimpse time like the inside of a kaleidoscope. Either way, he hears the soft thumping of footsteps moments later, and looks to the mouth of the alley where the boy from before is peering out from behind the corner, eyes huge.

Across from them, Yukhei rises with a grunt. His skin is puffy and shiny over his left eye, and his lip is split and bleeding, but otherwise he looks alright. Pointing at the kid, he shouts in accusation, “You ran off!”

The kid emerges fully from behind the corner with his hands on his hips, glaring. “What did you expect me to do, huh?” He really is a skinny thing, all knobby knees and elbows, but the spirit behind his eyes makes them glow bright and fiery. 

Yukhei waves his hand, hunching over at the waist and beckoning the kid closer. “No, you did good. Except for getting yourself into trouble in the first place. What did they want?”

“What else?” the kid asks, rolling his eyes as he approaches the soldier. The top of his head just comes up to Yukhei’s shoulder. “Money. It’s always money. My brother and I--” He snaps his mouth shut, eyes flicking over the Kun and Ten, lingering on the blood drying burgundy and brown over Ten’s hand. “Never mind. I’ve never seen anyone move like that. What _are_ you?”

“It’s rude to stare,” Ten says, turning to face the boy, eyes lowered. The silk robe sways at his ankles. He taps his fan against his thigh, like a dagger waiting to be unleashed.

“Are you some kind of demon? Or a ghost?” the boy asks as he helps steady Yukhei onto his feet.

Ten stills. “Both,” he says. “Neither.”

The kid blanches but doesn’t stumble, and continues helping Yukhei.

“You’re not afraid?” Kun asks, finally pushing himself from the wall. He takes a couple of steps, his feet dragging like stones, before Ten pushes his shoulder up underneath his arm to support him. Gratefully, he leans against the slighter figure. The silk over Ten’s skin is impossibly soft.

“Nah,” the kid says. “My brother is a medium.”

“A what,” Yukhei says, mouth hanging open slightly.

“A medium,” the boy says, nonplussed. “He channels spirits, and our customers pay us to talk to their ancestors and their dead. It’s bad luck, but there are always desperate people.”  A cloud shifts to cover the sun, and the air chills. Beside Kun, Ten’s skin is cool as marble. "I can bring you to him," the boy offers. "As thanks."

"We're not interested in fortune-tellers--" Yukhei starts, but Ten cuts him off.

“Bring us to him,” he says. His voice rings out like a bell. 

The boy stiffens, calculating the choice. The cloud before the sun shifts again, spearing light into the alley. 

“Alright.” The boy nods. “Follow me.”

.

The building that the boy leads them to is a squat structure in the middle of an alley so narrow that they must walk, nearly one behind the other, rickety and peeling walls on either side of them. The ground is damp and the air musty, old and stale. The mugginess weighs over them, slowing their steps to a plodding pace. Ten tsks when he must dodge shallow puddles in the unfinished road, stepping light footed around the pools of dirty water in order not to soak the hem of his robe.

“Here we are,” the boy says, stopping in front of a door with a plain looking wooden sign over it, the symbol for divination etched into the board. He pushes the door open and instantly a cloud of heavily perfumed, floral and herbaceous-scented smoke wafts out. Kun’s eyes water and sting at the onslaught.

It’s dark inside, and the single window at the opposite end of the room they enter is covered with a thick swath of fabric. It makes the room almost unbearably hot, and with the purple smoke unable to escape, swirling in little clouds as they move, Kun feels a bit like he’s suffocating.

“Ge,” the boy calls out, though no one immediately responds. “You’re so dramatic.” He walks with purpose to the window and pulls back the sheet with gusto, smoke curling around him in tendrils. Light streams in through the opening.

“Who have you brought into our home, Yangyang?” 

Kun spins on his heel, Ten’s hand braced against his lower back, and sees a young man sitting cross-legged on a cushion and partially hidden by a screen partition. A forest of incense sticks burns all around him in various pots and trays, the smoke rising from the myriad sticks like a gauzy film before him. His eyes find Kun’s. He has a narrow face and sharp nose, the lines of his neck long and elegant. The white tunic he’s wearing bunches in his lap.  His eyes narrow. “Ah,” the man says, a soft exhalation of breath that parts the smoke in front of his face. “A doctor.” The man’s gaze flicks to somewhere past Kun’s shoulder, to Yukhei. “A soldier.” His lips curve into a shallow smile. “And a curse.”

Ten’s hand stiffens across Kun’s back, and without thinking, Kun reaches behind himself to grasp at Ten’s fingers, to hold them with his own. “Who are you?” the doctor asks.

“Dong Sicheng,” the man says. His voice is low and deep, and his smile widens to reveal his teeth. “Come. Sit. We can give you something for your cuts and bruises before you go.” Sicheng gestures to the rug covering part of the floor in front of him. On the other side of the partition, Kun sees Yangyang taking jars from their shelves by the little square window, scooping out the contents of them into a mortar and grinding the combination of ingredients into a paste. There’s some padding folded up on the floor in the corner -- where Kun presumes they sleep -- and not much else to their single room. Most of it is taken up by incense, and the red altar behind where Sicheng sits.

“We can’t stay long,” Kun explains. “We must get back to the ship.”

“Of course,” Sicheng answers easily. From sitting, he floats to his feet gracefully, in one swift movement, and the white tunic falls like a curtain to his shins. He steps around the islands of incense around him and goes to help his younger brother with the pastes. 

Yukhei sits first, sighing as he plops down and rests his back against the wall, legs sprawled. Kun goes to sit near him, stifling a groan as the movement of bending down pinches the bruises at his ribs, and Ten primly sinks to his knees beside him, body tensed like a spring. 

When Kun reaches out to take Ten's hand again, the other flinches like a spooked cat, inhaling sharply. Kun brushes his thumb over the top of Ten's hand. “Afraid?” Kun whispers, recalling his  words in alley.

Ten scowls, his pinched lips like a jagged scar across his pretty features. “I don’t like priests,” is all he says, taking his hand back.

Sicheng and Yangyang return with two bowls of smelly and muddy looking pastes, a bowl of water, and a handful of rags. These they place in front of the group before sitting as well, forming a circle. “I’m not a priest,” Sicheng says. That grin is back on his face, peaceable and steady. “I'm more of a...free agent. I don’t serve the gods.” He reaches for Ten’s hands also. “Here, let me.”

Ten’s hands curl into tight fists. “If you’re truly a diviner, why don’t you serve them?”

Sicheng hums in thought. “They’re cruel and petty, and I’m not interested in their games.”

Across from them, Yukhei and Yangyang are laughing quietly over something. Kun watches how Yukhei’s expression brightens as the kid smears some of the paste over the swollen parts of Yukhei’s face. There is a scar above Yukhei’s eyebrow. The kid sees it, asks about it, and Yukhei launches into a story about how he got it. Yangyang’s eyes are bright with curiosity and amazement.

“Have you ever served the gods?” Ten asks.

“Once,” Sicheng admits. “But the temple wasn’t kind to my brother. Sometimes I think Yangyang is a little wildling. He chafed inside those walls.”

“So you left?”

“So we left,” Sicheng affirms with a grave nod. “Now, will you let me clean the blood from your hands?”

.


	8. Chapter 8

The water in the bowl turns murky as Ten’s hands are cleaned of the blood. Sicheng sends Yangyang to fetch more bowls, to throw the dirtied water out, and goes back to his shelves of dried herbs and the tiny husks of creatures, murmuring to himself as he prepares another concoction.

Ten turns to Kun. There is another bowl, untouched, and he dips a clean cloth into the water within, soaking the fabric. His fingers are light and cool under Kun’s chin, gently prodding, urging him to face Ten.

“Close your eyes,” Ten orders in a whisper, and Kun does. “You shouldn't go looking for trouble like that,” Ten continues, dabbing at Kun's brow with the damp washcloth. His hands are steady, and Kun's head reels as he remembers how just moments ago they'd been covered in blood, thick and red and sticky.

“I was looking for _you_ ,” Kun points out. He winces as the rough material of the washcloth grazes over an open cut above his eyebrow, and his eyelids slit open. With Ten looming over him like this, Kun can see down the open folds of Ten's robe to his sternum, his belly button, the material smooth and luminous and barely covering the sharp angles of his collarbones, where the scales covering his skin glisten like oil over water. “Why did you leave the ship?”

“I was sick of the waves,” Ten says. “I wanted something steady beneath my feet.”

“Well, were you planning on returning?”

“To the ship?”

“To me,” Kun says, all on an exhale, tensing when Ten’s hand stops moving over his brow, when the other boy takes the washcloth and wrings it out over the bowl, until the fabric is almost completely dry, his knuckles white. The doctor feels foolish once the words leave him. Foolish and petty. Who is he to demand such a thing? Though he may be ready to dive headfirst into shark-infested waters should Ten wish it of him, it doesn’t mean Ten feels the same.

But then with his lashes lowered and his brows pinched, Ten asks, “Didn’t I come back?” He rises to his knees and hovers over Kun, so close Kun can feel shadowy coolness emanating from his skin. Ten presses his lips against the cut above Kun’s eyebrow, and the chill passes through Kun in a violent shiver. His heart pounds in his ears. Ten sits back, a satisfied grin on his too-red lips. His tongue darts out to taste the smear of blood on them, and his smile grows. “You taste so sweet,” he coos.

.

Yangyang returns with more water. As they clean and dress their wounds, the young teenager asks question after question of them, babbling like a stream.

“Why are you so bad at fighting?” he wants to know. “How long have you been traveling, and what have you seen, and did you see any other monsters?” Also, “Where did you find Ten?” and, “Where is the ship going?”

Kun answers him, and the kid’s eyes light up at the mention of Hong Kong.

Yangyang smears the smelly paste messily over a bruise on Xuxi’s cheek in his excitement. “I’ve always wanted to go there! A real city…But Ge says we can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“Too many demons,” Yangyang responds easily, and if Kun had been drinking something he would have spit it out of his mouth in surprise at the indifferent tone. Sicheng, now pushing the many pots of incense to the walls to make more space in the center of the room, chuckles.

Ten throws his head back and laughs, shifting closer to Kun and laying his head on his shoulder. He winds a possessive arm around Kun’s middle. “It seems I’ll like it there,” he whispers to the group.

“You’re not a demon,” Kun insists, though Xuxi rolls his eyes. Ten, too. They can’t see it, but Kun can feel the exasperation rising like fine mist off the surface of his skin.

“Say it all you want. It doesn’t make it true. You can’t change what I am.” Ten’s fingers find the tender, bruised spot on Kun’s ribs, grazing over it, and Kun gasps at the flutter that the shock of dull pain incites in his stomach. He tilts his head down, fixes his gaze on Ten’s pink, plush lips, and feels an insidious heat start to pool in his gut. He rips his gaze away from Ten’s red gash of a mouth, and finds Sicheng staring at them both.

“You’re a medium,” Kun says, feeling dull and dumb when Sicheng just lifts an eyebrow at his statement. “I mean,” he corrects quickly. “If you’re a medium, can’t you see? That he’s not a monster or a demon?”

Ten shifts against him before moving away, frowning. He holds the fan in one hand. Kun looks down and notices it is still brown with blood at the edges, uncleaned. He wonders if he should ask Ten to clean it.

“To spot a demon is a tricky thing. Some of them are very good at being human,” Sicheng says. “Sometimes, it’s only when you look into their eyes that you realize there’s nothing behind them.” He stands with the same grace as a dancer, lifting himself up to his feet and floating over to where Kun and Ten sit. The medium pauses, standing before them, his white tunic like a veil.

Ten doesn’t move; he hardens like stone, like marble, his skin turning too bitingly cold to touch. Kun wants nothing more than to lay him down in their cot back on the ship, to melt the chill away with his own body heat. He wishes he had said nothing at all.

But then Sicheng continues: “I don’t need to look into your eyes to know what you are. I see it. The curse. It coils around you and within you like a snake.”

Kun’s eyes widen, hope sparking in his chest. “If you can see it, then it can be removed.”

“No,” Ten hisses immediately, shoulders curling in on themselves.

“Why not?”

“I said _no_ ,” Ten says, standing suddenly and backing himself up against the wall, looking as tensed and spooked as a cornered animal. He snaps the fan open, holding it in front of his face and chest like a shield.

“Alright,” Xuxi jumps in smoothly, tone light and neutral. “No one’s going to take your precious curse away from you.”

“I couldn’t, anyway,” Sicheng admits. He sighs a little as he walks slowly to the window, squinting and peering out of it. The light coming through the opening is bright and sharp. “The curse doesn’t sit above your skin. It’s woven into your very bones.”

“You can’t help him?” Yangyang asks, sounding disappointed.

His brother sighs. “No, I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny update sorry :(

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments and kudos always appreciated <3
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [my cc](http://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


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